


Starlit Youth, Rising Sun

by d3vilsivy



Series: Lionheart Girl [1]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Amnesia, F/F, F/M, Memory Loss, Multi, POV Multiple, Polyamory, Trans Female Character, Trans Inquisitor (Dragon Age), edan is an incorrigible flirt and a tease, ive had to turn down half the romanceable characters in my current playthrough lmfao, warden becomes inquisitor
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-07
Updated: 2020-05-15
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:08:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24051082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/d3vilsivy/pseuds/d3vilsivy
Summary: Edan Lavellan woke up ten years ago with no memory of her life before. Now, at the end of the world, she has the chance to get it all back.
Relationships: Female Inquisitor/Leliana (Dragon Age), Female Lavellan/Leliana (Dragon Age), Inquisitor/Leliana (Dragon Age), Leliana/Female Surana (Dragon Age), Leliana/Female Warden (Dragon Age), Leliana/Warden (Dragon Age)
Series: Lionheart Girl [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1735078
Comments: 10
Kudos: 76





	1. Prologue

“I knew coming back here was going to bite me in the ass.”

Edan muttered to herself in Elvish, trying to make her way unnoticed and unharmed through the mountainside camps whose occupants were now wild with terror. Something was attacking, but who or what it was, no one knew. 

“Go to Ferelden, they said. The Conclave is important, they said. Well, clearly, it was too important!” Her voice rose in her panic, but no one heard it amid the overpowering din of fleeing crowds. “This place is cursed! Would have been better off staying back in the Marches. Nothing good ever comes of fucking with shemlen and their Chantry, nothing!”

Nearly shouting by now, she tripped over a pile of sacks and fell face-first into the dirt.

“FUCK!”

Behind the fires of her frustration, something cold and heavy gripped her heart. She’d felt it ever since she’d arrived in Ferelden. It made her want to run, but she figured if she was already here, she might as well find out what she could; and the likelihood of her survival wouldn’t change much even if she did run, judging by the seemingly endless carnage surrounding her.

She had to make it to the temple.

She would have been there already, but a gaggle of Templars at the perimeter had thought it’d be fun to harass the lone Dalish elf. Their hostility turned out to be her salvation. If she’d been inside or even near the temple when the attack began, she might have lost her life.

Edan picked herself up, groaning, and pressed onward. 

As she put more distance between herself and the masses, she began to notice a strange music playing, seemingly without a source. It only grew louder as she closed in on the temple, and it was unlike anything she'd heard before. She wondered if she was going mad. 

Before she realized it, she was wandering the temple itself, the music reaching a fevered pitch that made it hard to carry a thought. When she heard a woman crying out in distress, she thought she was imagining it. But this sound had a source. Edan followed it as best she could, until she reached a door with a hellish red glow escaping the crack at the floor. 

Beyond that, everything faded to black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> another longform no one asked for, but i've been wanting to write it for a while. who knew all i needed to really enjoy dai was a little more darkspawn blood and none of the actual in-game romance routes?
> 
> anyway the funny thing here is that shes doing all this bitching but she definitely has a long history of thirsting after chantry women ;P


	2. A Falling Star

Leliana stared.

This had to be some kind of cruel joke.

Solas was sitting cross-legged beside the elf who'd fallen from the rift in the temple ruins, holding her left hand in both of his, the green glow from the mark casting his serene features in a ghastly light. But it wasn't his face the bard was concerned with.

When she looked at the elven woman beside him, all she could see was the cold, battered body of her beloved lying motionless on a stone slab ten years ago.

Gone were the wild curls of her youth, her straw-colored hair instead cut close to her scalp. Her skin was a shade darker and scattered with freckles, more time spent in the sun than traveling by night to avoid the Teryn's men. Vallaslin spread out from her forehead in branch-like veins and ran down over her lips to form roots upon her chin. If only she would open her eyes...

Her heart grew tight in her chest, but she shouldn't let herself get worked up. Enna Surana had escaped this plane in a flash of blinding light, like a shooting star, burning out fast and bright. Leliana had sobbed over her corpse, checked for her pulse and her breath countless times, though she'd known what to expect all along. She was certain her love died that day.

But the part of her that she'd been trying for years to tamp down was screaming, _You lost her body! It was never buried, never found!_

"Solas?"  
"Yes?"  
"Would you be able to tell if there was any other magic affecting her?"  
"Generally speaking, yes. I have examined her for maladies both physical and magical; but beyond a few scrapes and bruises, the only thing out of the ordinary is this mark."  
"Nothing else?"  
"She is a mage of great potential. You should be careful when she wakes, if she wakes."

No necromancy, then, if he was to be trusted.

Leliana told no one else that their only lead on the origin of the hole in the sky bore an unsettling resemblance to the Grey Warden who died to end the Blight. Tensions were high enough as it was. Though she had to keep Cassandra from knocking the prisoner unconscious again, she was relieved when they left together to seek out the breach. It was far more difficult to keep her composure when the prisoner was awake and speaking in a painfully familiar voice.

When the prisoner looked at Leliana, there was no spark of recognition in her eyes.

..

Edan felt like a bear had bitten her head clean off, chewed it up, and spit the bloody mess back out to sit atop her shoulders again. Everywhere hurt, everything was too loud, and everyone wanted her to answer for a moment in time that she honestly could not account for. The mark on her hand radiated pain all the way up her arm, but she still had to take up a staff to defend herself from the myriad demons and wisps that poured forth from the wounded sky. She couldn't for the life of her imagine how she was meant to mend something so titanic. But Cassandra seemed to believe she could, and she certainly wasn't making a stealthy escape with a glowing magic hand.

Further along the path, they ran into an elven mage and a roguish dwarf locked in combat with several shades below a crystalline tear of the same magic that marred Edan's palm. They finished the battle, and the apostate took her hand and held it up to the source of the demons to seal it in a blinding flash of light. He was informative and cordial, if aloof. A puzzle.

The dwarf, however, Edan took a liking to immediately. As they made to move on, he noticed her trembling from the cold, and offered her a knit scarf from his pack. It smelled faintly like a tavern, and she sensed a familiar protection charm laid on it, old but strong.

"Varric… where did you get this?"  
"An old friend made it," he said, a wry smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.  
"Was your friend Dalish?"  
"Why do you ask?"  
"There's a protection spell worked into it, one that outsiders wouldn't know. You must have been important to them to receive a gift like this."  
He looked away, scratching the back of his neck, but she could see his smile had deepened. “Just try to get it back to me in one piece.”

..

Edan was somewhat more lucid the second time she saw Leliana. She was arguing fruitlessly with a crotchety old cleric, irritation evident in the thin line of her lips, but she kept her tongue in check far better than the Seeker. From the sounds of it, she and Cassandra had been close to the late Divine, though Edan struggled to guess what her role in the Chantry might be. Her light mail coat offered little information beyond a roguish inclination. Edan regretted not learning more about the Chantry’s key players before coming here.

“What do _you_ think we should do?”

She blinked, finding all faces had turned toward her while she was... staring. Her cheeks flushed. What had they been saying?

She tried to muster up some nerve.

“Now you’re asking me what I think?”  
“You have the mark.”  
“And you are the one we must keep alive. Since we cannot agree on our own…”

Edan glanced back at Leliana. She nodded toward the mountain past the bridge, the ghost of a smile gracing her rosy lips.

“We’ll use the mountain path.”

..

When the first rift was sealed and everyone pulled back from the ruined temple, all Edan wanted was to go back to bed. She hadn’t slept properly since making landing on the Storm Coast, her dreams more full of monsters than usual. But there was still work to do. She wasn’t even sure whether she was still a prisoner or not.

It seemed like everyone in Haven had turned out to see her walk by on her way to the chapel. She heard murmurs of awe, of confusion, of conjecture. She flashed a tight smile at a cluster of Sisters near the entrance to the building.

Inside, she heard more arguing. That gods-forsaken cleric again. Why was he still here? Though his concern seemed genuine, all he brought to the table were more roadblocks. The rules of a decaying order.

Cassandra quickly put an end to that, slamming an enormous tome of a missive on the table before the indignant cleric. The Inquisition. An ominous name, one Edan knew very little of, and what she did know she didn’t find comforting. But something had to be done, and this seemed the strongest path forward. 

What lay in store for her, Edan couldn’t say. But by the mark still burning in her palm, she was irrevocably tied to this chain of events, and she was never one to back down from a challenge. 

What's more, she'd always been a sucker for redheads.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cosmic love is a song by florence + the machine 
> 
> gay
> 
> inquisition was my first dragon age game, and i love origins dearly, but da2 will always be my favorite.


	3. Let the Wheels Turn Slowly

Late afternoon sunlight filtered through the leaves of the trees, dappling the grassy earth beneath where they'd made camp for the evening. Edan rummaged through her pack for a glossy black pipe, a worn leather pouch of dried Elfroot, and a little box of matches.

"Mind if I join you?" A gruff, friendly voice inquired from just past her shoulder. She smiled.  
"Have a seat," she replied, patting the empty stretch of weathered log beside her. Varric plopped down and watched her pack the pipe.

"Hadn't figured you for a smoker."  
"Times like these, I could use it." She didn't tell him it was the only way she managed to fall asleep most nights.

Despite the fair weather, the day hadn't been particularly kind. The hinterlands of Ferelden had become a bloody battleground, scarred by the frenzied war between rebel mages and Templars. Seeing it, much less trudging through the thick of it, made her more angry and dispirited than she'd anticipated. It was exhausting.

"If I'd known, I would have offered some of mine a while ago. Elfroot grows different here than it does in the Marches."  
"Does it?" She said, turning slightly to face him.  
"The flavor burns earthy in Ferelden. Back home, it's more smoky and citrus."  
"This is all I have left from there," she said, hefting the pouch in her hand. "I hadn't planned on being here… well, indefinitely."  
"Why _did_ you come here?"

Edan was busy getting the pipe going, re-lighting and puffing a few times before passing it to Varric. She heaved a sigh, smoke passing from her lips to float delicately on the faint breeze.

"My Keeper asked me to go to the Conclave to get a better idea of what was going on. She believed something important was going to happen. Guess she was right."  
Varric took a long drag from the pipe and handed it back to Edan. "I've only run into a couple of Dalish clans, but that seems to be the case with Keepers."  
"There's a reason we have mages as our leaders," Edan said with a small grin. "But what about you? Why were you here?"  
"What, you haven't heard Cassandra grumbling about it yet?"  
"A little. But you tell a better story."  
The dwarf smiled. "Maker, I hope so. That woman cares nothing for artistic detail."  
"Probably too busy hitting things."

A loud snort was heard from further behind them. Edan snickered.

"How old are you, anyway? I can never tell with elves."  
"Asking for a friend?" She leaned in conspiratorially. "Is she cute?"  
"I hear Flissa finds you 'quite handsome.'"  
"Hmm. You're a true pal, Varric." She took another draw on the pipe, a slight tremor in her hand. She caught herself and switched it to her right. "Void. I keep forgetting it's there. Ah, you can keep a secret, right?"

He nodded, brow quirked.

"I don't really know my age. Can't remember anything beyond about a decade ago now." She passed the pipe.  
"No shit?"  
"Woke up completely out of my mind somewhere in Ferelden, and eventually ran into the clan that took me in. They needed a First, and I was powerful but, well, untrained. Not long after, we moved on to the Free Marches, things being what they were here at the time."  
"Must've kept your distance from Kirkwall, then."  
"Oh, yes. But rest assured, we heard plenty about what went on there."  
"I was born there."  
"Damn."  
"Yeah."

Edan watched him take a long drag and exhale like he'd been smoking from infancy. He didn't look too old, at least for a dwarf, but lines of worry were starting to show on his face. Laugh lines too, she noted with growing fondness.

"You were close to the Champion of Kirkwall, right?"  
"That's why I'm here," he said with a note of bitterness. "The Seeker wanted to know more about what happened back home, and dragged me with her to testify to the Divine. Not my first choice in vacations, but it doesn't hurt to have a front row seat for the next time the world gets saved."  
"Doesn't it, though?"  
He laughed. "No risk, no reward."

..

Leliana felt like she was trapped in a strange dream. The so-called Herald of Andraste was friendly with her, even somewhat flirtatious, but she was that way with a lot of people. It was clear she didn't know Leliana, not like Enna had.

Then the reports began rolling in. Warden activity on the rise, despite the lack of a Blight. Accounts of odd behavior. She'd even heard about Wardens hunting one of their own, a man she'd known well once, though he was doing a superb job of hiding his tracks. She left him to it, for his own safety.

It occurred to her that if she could determine whether or not Edan was a Warden, she might be one step closer to figuring out who she really was, and what had happened to her.

So she kept her ear to the ground, and eventually picked up on two solid leads: a lone Warden recruiting in Ferelden, and several sightings of Wardens on the Storm Coast. She took them immediately to Edan. If she was a Warden herself, direct confrontation with other Wardens should make that obvious.

Warden Blackwall was investigated first, but he knew nothing about his fellows' behavior, and his meeting with Edan seemed to have little effect at first. Leliana didn't realize it until the next day, when she heard the elf had left to investigate the northern coast: the dead end had only kindled her curiosity. Leliana began to hope.

..

That night, she let herself remember.

There were a few trees within Skyhold, but outside the land was mostly too cold and harsh for plants. Back in Ferelden, you could always hear the sough of wind through the trees. When they would make camp for the night, they kept far from civilization; purely for practicality, but apart from the faint threat of the wilderness and the Blight, it was quite peaceful. They made a little pocket of space just for them, for talking and eating and resting. For living.

She would talk with Enna about the stars, about the music of the world, about a time when Leliana was young and caught up in the romance of the Game. Enna would tell her about life in the Circle, how it was tight and slightly menacing, but how they had their fun as well. She'd had numerous trysts, told Leliana stories about them ranging from the ribald to tender and back again to the tension of evading the ever-vigilant Templars. Some of them would just watch you, hungry, waiting.

Leliana would follow her with her eyes, delighting in how the firelight carved her animated face from the dark of night. Follow the curve of her lips when she smiled, the tight furrowing of her brow at more tense topics. She remembered how Enna looked at her with shameless adoration, no pretenses, no hiding. She thought of how Edan looked at her now, no recognition, and with the marks of heavier years of living, but still with an open heart.

She felt like crying, but she hadn't been able to cry for years.

..

Edan wasn't sure what kind of idiot left their reports lying around after they were gone, but she was grateful this Warden was one.

Certainly, it was entertaining to read about their encounters with an attractive local fisherman, but a lot of what was recorded was eerily familiar. The whispers in the quiet, sensing beings beneath the earth, dreams that kept them from restful sleep. One of these alone would mean nothing, but all of them together set her mind spinning.

By the time they reached the end of the trail, Edan was sluggish from more restless sleep than normal, as her thoughts kept her awake late into the night… and always accompanying her, the faint, haunting music. She wondered when it had begun, but it felt like it had always been there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> let the wheels turn slowly is a song by the taxpayers 
> 
> kind of all over the place cus i followed inspiration more than my outline lol. 
> 
> the original plan was to write out the dao story in a separate fic after this, but i might just tell it through flashbacks in this one as Edan regains memories and Leliana starts to reflect on her past more, cus i could easily write the parts i really wanted to that way. i'll keep it a series though, i have plenty of one-shot ideas ;)


End file.
